Our First Snowman

Jose K and I woke up this morning to discover that it snowed very heavily last night. There was even snow right up to our kitchen door. It was good fluffy snow not the icy stuff so we figured that it was a good day to finally build our very own snowman.

The hill behind our apartment is a really good buiding site. People seldom walk through it so the chances of your snowman lasting the entire winter is pretty good. So far, there are already 2 snowmen guarding the hill. This one has been here since early December and it is quite a feat of engineering. It is very tall. (It's about a head taller than the snowman that we finally built). Not very aesthetically pleasing- it does not have eyes, nose, ears, mouth or hands but it is snowman-shaped.

This one here appeared this morning. Whoever built it got tired halfway and gave it a very small head. I think it is a snow troll rather than a snow man. (heh)

Jose K wanted to get instructions from the Internet for builidng a snowman. I thought we should just wing it. After all, how difficult could it be? Just shovel together a heap of snow and make it round...

As we started to build our snowman, we quickly found out that it was not so easy. It took quite a lot of work to gather all the snow together. We had to climb up and down the hill many times. Midway, we got tired of using our hands and switched to plastic colanders to scoop up the snow, that made it alot easier. The interesting thing I discovered was that fluffy snow had almost the same texture as wet sand.

We aslo could not really make it very round. At one point, our snowman looked like a giant pyramid and then a giant boob (hah). But we did not give up.

After much patting and reshaping (at one point Jose K patted the snowman's head too hard and half of its face dropped off. Shriek!) here is a picture of the completed snow-man. We think it has an Asian aesthetic going on. What do you think?

Ice

I understand the temperature now is about -8 to -12 degrees celcius.

Needless to say, the lake Sognsvann near where we live is frozen over. We tried walking on the lake the other day. It was quite fun till we realized how thin the ice was.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Things are a little slow around Christmas Eve. All the shops close early and everyone stays home for a family Christmas dinner. Our apartment is also really quite quiet as all our mates have headed home for the holidays.

With all the time on my hands, I decided that I would try my hand at making a "traditional" Norwegian Christmas dinner.

I heard from some Norwegians that pinnekjott is a rather popular dish around Christmas time. "Pinnekjott" I understand means twig meat. It is essentiall salted and dried lamb which looks a little like twigs before you cook it.

Apart from pinnekjott, there are also other traditional Norwegian meals as well. There is for instance "juletalerken", which is the standard Christmas meal of sausages, meatcakes, roast pork and potatoes. I tried it at IKEA about a week ago and it wasn't too exciting. It was probably something I could easily prepare back home if I wanted to.

There is also "lutefisk" which I believe is cod soaked in lye and dried. Lye, I understand, is an ingredient in modern day drain cleaners! Most non-Norwegians I've met really don't like it. I decided that although I really like trying out new and exciting foods, I wasn't bored enough (yet) to take on "lutefisk".

I therefore settled on pinnekjott, a dish which I couldn't make back home and which had a higher chance of tasting good than "lutefisk".

I bought a bag of pinnekjott from the RIMI at Ulleval Stadion on the day before Christmas eve. It was really crowded (by Oslo standards) and people were everywhere grabbing beer, milk, meat, oranges. Interestingly, Norwegians eat lots of oranges at Christmas time, kind of like Chinese New Year back home. A kilo of oranges were going for US$0.80! We have lost count of the number of oranges we have eaten.

There was a real bustle in the city.

Anyway, back to the pinnekjott. When I got home, I put half a kilo of pinnekjott to soak for about 10 hours. Here are pictures of the before, during and after.











The next day, I had to steam the hydrated lamb pieces to get it soft. This proved to be a little challenging because we don't have a steamer or any big pots. After a little experimenting, I settled on using two small pots (the biggest I could find in my apartment), two inverted bowls and two little plates. I split the lamb into two equal portions and steamed it in the two pots for about two hours or so.

While the lamb steamed, I prepared some turnip mash. I don't know if this is traditional Norwegian but all the pictures of pinnekjott I had seen had turnip mash and I decided that I would make it too. I just cut up the turnip, boiled it in some water. When it was done, I mixed some butter and a little milk into it and just mashed away. It was quite fun. I decided I wouldn't add any salt to the mash because the lamb would be salty enough.

When the lamb was done steaming, I popped the pieces into the oven at 200 for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile I reduced the juices from the steamer to pour onto the meat when serving. Here are more pictures.





















Candles are really popular here in Christmas time and very nice to have around during the dark winter months. But that is not the primary reason we decided to use the candles. The main reason was that the kithcen lights blew while I was cooking!

The sparkling drink in the picture is pear cider. We also had some akuavitt, a type of Scandinavian liquor we bought on our trip to Stockholm. I think it tastes like a mix between vodka and gin.

Bjorg prepared a traditional dessert called rissengrott. It was rice in cream with some vanilla flavour. It tasted vaguely like a Malay dessert. She just mixed a packet of the premix in hot water. Maybe we'll bring some packets home with us when we leave Norway.

So how did the pinnekjott taste? Well...it tasted like salted lamb. It was quite heavy tasting and oily but quite soft from all the steaming. It went well with the turnip mash which was a little sweet and light. The dessert worked out well too.

The best part about the meal was that it was so much cheaper than having it in a restaurant. The meal would have easly cost us well over US$100 if we had had it at a restaurant. I still have another half kilo of meat in the freezer!

Lost in Translation

I'm sure that I speak for all of us, Singaporeans when I say that MILO has a special place in our hearts.

It's not just because MILO tastes darn good and beats Ovaltine hands down.

It's not just because of the catchy MILO jingles in the advertisements (remember the "grow like a champion...grow"and "it's marvellous what MILO can do for you"?)

It's mostly because we grew up with MILO. Remember how the MILO truck used to come during special school events and dispensed that cold, chocolate-y and utterly yummy drink in those small green cups? (I could never replicate that at home with my MILO.)

So imagine the sadness I felt when I could not get MILO in Norway.

Imagine the greater shock when I realized that MILO meant something else here. It is with a heavy heart that I post this picture....

Washing detergent... for wool and silk no less!

I want my MILO peng, no make that a MILO dinosaur! *sniffle*

Stockholm II

This is an overdue account of how Stockholm was.

If ever I had to recommend a city to visit in Scandinavia, I would recommend Stockholm. I will be able to confirm this after my trip to Copenhagen, Denmark next year.

When I told my classmates that I was going to Stockholm, the general impression they gave me was that Stokholm was a "real city" (unlike Oslo). After my trip, I now understand what they mean.

While Stockholm has many beautiful historical buildings and museums, it at the same time has all the bustle and energy of a big city (the malls reminded us of home).

Bjorg and I both agree that the people were really nice and friendly and they all spoke excellent English. We may be wrong but we have also noticed that Swedish women are generally smaller than their Norwegian counterparts.

We didn't take any pictures of the malls or the main shopping street but here's a picture of the town square of the old city. The old city was built on an islet in a river and is completely surrounded by water.


After having visited Stockholm, I must say that one of the best things about Oslo is how close it is to Stockholm. The overnight bus ride was under 8 hrs and cost us about US$25 one way!

We have since discovered that Oslo is not just close to Stockholm but also to many other cities in Europe. We will be heading of to Budapest in January and Berlin in February.

We take only the cheapest flights/buses. Our motto as students is that there's nothing too cheap for us. Our return tickets to Berlin (excluding taxes) for two comes to a grand total of 12 NOK which is about US$2!

Stay tuned for our updates on our future trips.

Eirik

Our Amercan apartment mate Eirik returned home to Wisconsin for good on Monday.

He was the guy who showed us the way to IKEA and the police station the first day we got here. Getting to IKEA was very important for us because we had no pillows, comforters/blankets or curtains and theres no way of getting them anywhere near where we live. Curtains were crucial because we live on the ground floor and have huge clear windows.

Eirik also does really, really good impressions of people and can identify all kinds of American/Canadian accents that we didn't even know existed. He's an all round interesting person.

Here's a picture of Eirik pretending to be very excitied about the little cake we got him for his birthday.

The Exams

I had my exams on Friday. It was 6 hours long and lasted from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Everyone had to get to the examination hall by 8.30 a.m. so that the invigilators could check the documents we were bringing in. We got to school before sunrise and by the time we were done it was already night time (because its winter, the sun doesn't stay out for very long).

I don't think exams should be that long. It was physically exhausting more than anything else. At the end of it I had written 32 pages - which is I think more than I have ever handwritten before.


On Friday night, I met up with the rest of my classmates. One of them was a Norwegian law student who told me that last semester, he had 30 HOURS of exams - three 8 hour exams and one 6 hour one. The exams were apparently about everything he had learnt in the past two years.

Apparently the law students in Scandinavia are used to such long examinations.

Thankfully I only have two more to go next semester.

Here are pictures of our tables while studying for the exams (something we have not done for a while).

We killed a plant yesterday

Jose K and I went to IKEA yesterday to get a poinsettia for Jose K's classmate who is going to be hosting us for Christmas.

We found a really pretty one, paid for it and were ready to leave.

Unfortunately, there was a traffic jam or something and the normally reliable IKEA bus did not turn up. We were at the Slependen branch which is about 20 minutes outside the city and we did not know how to get back to Oslo so we waited.

The bus is scheduled to leave 10 minutes past every hour. The 4.10 pm bus did not arrive so we decided to get some coffee. We returned to wait at 4.50 pm. The bus stop is outdoors and by then, it was nightfall and it was COLD! (We later found out that it was about -9 degrees.)

5.10 pm came and went. Still no bus!

After waiting in the cold for 20/25 minutes, Jose K and I could not take the cold anymore and we went into the building again. It was then that I discovered that our poinsettia had DIED on me. The 20/25 minutes proved too much for it. AAAAAAH..... Look at the poor thing. The withered leaves, the floppy red petals.












The IKEA bus finally arrived at 6.10pm and when we reached home, we tried to resuscitate the plant by keeping it near the heater and shining a light nearby it.

Unfortunately, nothing worked and we had to throw it away this morning.

I have since found out that the poinsettia is native to southern Mexico and Central America and it does not like the cold. The IKEA tag helpfully stated that the minimum temperature for the poinsettia is 18 degrees. Excuse me... daily temperatures in Oslo now hover between -3 degrees to -8 degrees. 18 degrees was like in early August.

PS: In case you were wondering, we're getting potpurri, chocolates and candies for Jose K's friend instead. Much safer this way.

Jul!

It's going to be Christmas really soon and we have yet to eat traditional Norwegian Christmas food.

Drats!

This will of course be remedied soon as Jose K will be finishing his exams today.

Till then, I will share some pictures of how the Jul (pronounced as "yul"aka Christmas in Norwegian) spirit has permeated even the most humble of grocery items. It's really quite cool how everything is "jul-lified' here.

I present... the Christmas beer (Jul Øl) (pronounced roughly as"yul erl")



The picture is unfortunately quite blur because I sneakily took this at a supermarket which shall not be named. Each bottle is about 14 kroners ($3.50 SGD) and I didn't feel like drinking beer at 10.30am in the morning... If you look closely at the Ringnes logo, you will see that there are little Santa-ish figures around it. The Norwegians call them Nisse, they are from Scandinavian folklore and are believed to take care of a farmer's home and barn and protect it from misfortune. You can read more about it here.

All the beer manufacturers put out their own Jul Øl and it does taste different from the usual beer that we get which is usually a lager. This Jul Øl is more like an ale.

Ok... we move onto to Jul brus (Christmas Soda)


This frighteninly red soda (I bought the sugarfree version) is strangely cheaper than all the other soft drinks. It cost only 5 kroners ($1.25 SGD) whereas a bottle of Coke would cost $14 ($3.50 SGD). I wonder why? I say this because the Jul brus is manufactured by the Coca Cola company as well. Honestly, it's not bad, it tastes like...like..llike (that explains the price difference). Well it's sweet and it's fizzy. That's good enough for me.

Finally, (this is my personal favourite) Jul Milk!

Ok, ok, it's just normal milk but they changed the packaging specially for Jul. So cute. Lett is approximately 1.5% fat. They have weird milk that is 0.5% and even 0.1%. Bah, those were bad, like drinking water that was milk coloured.

Tine is this huge company in Norway, they do all sorts of dairy products (milk, cheese and yoghurt) and juice. When you go to a typical grocery store, almost everything related to dairy/juice is made by Tine. They are not however very well known outside Norway. See here for more.

Well, those were just the things I had in our kitchen. They also have marzipan pigs, see here for an example. Jose K bought me one and it was quite yummy. Why pigs you ask? I asked my Norwegian flatmate why it was in the shape of a pig and he said he didn't know. So can't help you there.

Birthday booty (2)

The saga of the parcel finally ended yesterday when we picked it up from the post office.

Jose K's sister had so kindly sent us a parcel (a HUGE one) for our birthday some time in October. Yes, it took almost 1 and 1/2 months to reach Norwegian soil. And when it finally did, it got sent to the wrong post office so we had to wait for it to be re-directed.

But it was worth the wait... we now have an abudance of gummi bears, reeses' peanut butter cups (which I don't think we can get in Oslo unless the American embassy has a secret stash), Aunt Jemima (mmhmmm) pancake mix, specialty teas, a never a "dhal moment" recipe pack complete with mustard seeds, dhals, chili flakes, curry powder and the all import RECIPE, spice mixes, dried longan and a recipe book for stews and soups

*whew*

My personal favourite are of course the birthday cards. See below

The one of the left was for Jose K and the peng-san-ded polar bear is mine. Arent' they da bomb?



We also received birthday cash from my aunt and grandma. Thank you so much! We will definitely put it to good use.

Ooh.. aren't we the lucky ones?

'twas the night before....

Picture taken at 4pm! (yes, I kid you not). The moon came out at 3.30pm. It's really surreal.